The Development of the Swedish Game Industry - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 123

with games regarding graphical presentation. However, the demos were not
interactive. Demos were often technical achievements that demonstrated
artistic creativity that pushed the boundaries of computer graphics.
The demos were often created by collaborations within dif erent groups.
The often international demogroups, consisting mostly of young males, would
try to outshine each other with spectacular demos. Demos would be shown
and spread at computer meetings and through BBS-servers (Polgár 2005).
One early company that sprung directly out of the demoscene was Digital
Illusions (DICE). Some Swedish members of the demogroup “The Silent”
started working on a pinball game in the late 1980s. As a consequence of
a contract with British publisher 21st Century Entertainment, a company
was founded in the beginning of the 1990s. The company developed a few
pinball games ( Pinball Dreams , Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Illusions )
before deciding that the market for pinball games was too small. The com-
pany moved over to the broader racing genre in order to expand.
DICE got more solid fi nancial backing in the middle of the 1990s. Bon-
nier, one of the largest book publishers in Sweden, wanted to get into the
game industry and invested in the company. The new capital made it pos-
sible for DICE to expand into other genres once again. This time, DICE
expanded by buying up a number of smaller companies, the most impor-
tant acquisition being the Swedish company Refraction Games. Refraction
had released the fi rst-person shooter (FPS) game Codename Eagle in 1999.
Codename Eagle was an innovative game, but did not become a big com-
mercial success. Refraction had planned a follow-up game, later known as
Battlefi eld 1942 .
Another of the early companies with a similar background and its roots
in the 1980s was Atod. The company has not developed any well-known
hit games and it has grown neither as quickly nor to the same extent as
DICE. Atod started developing games for the ZX Spectrum before moving
over to Commodore Amiga in the early 1990s. In the mid-1990s the com-
pany moved over to console games, which was unique in Sweden, almost
all other companies were oriented toward the PC market.
The Swedish game industry was in an introduction phase and expanded
slowly until the second part of 1990s. DICE and Atod were among the few
developers that were established in this early phase and managed to survive
into the 2000s. When the expansive period began, the number of new com-
panies increased rapidly during a period of just a few years. The number
of active companies rose from under fi fteen companies in the mid-1990s to
over eighty in 2002. This increase coincided with a growing interest in the
ICT sector in general. Many of the most infl uential Swedish game studios
were founded during this period. Starbreeze, Avalanche Studios, Massive
Entertainment and Mindark are some of the game studios that started dur-
ing this period.
One of these companies, Starbreeze, was established in 1998 and now
belongs to the most recognized game studios in Sweden. The company